This research aims to examine the capacity of restorative justice to have an influence on desistance from crime, by focusing on mediation processes in order to identify whether there is a relationship between participating in a mediation process and taking the decision to desist from crime as well as to study the offenders' stability in a pro-social life, desisting from deviant behaviour. A particular aim of the research is to explore whether the victims’ participation in the process, restoration and the process itself can promote positive changes in the offenders’ behaviour after completion of the mediation programme dealt with in this research. First, to examine to what extent the offender can reduce the use of some neutralisation techniques. Specifically, the aim is to analyse whether the offender is able to recognise that there has been a victim, to admit having injured someone and to admit rather than deny responsibility for it. Second, the aim is to analyse whether mediation enables offenders to express guilt, remorse and shame and thus lead them to change their offending behaviour. And finally, to analyse whether the process has an impact on the offender’s ability to reflect on what happened and its consequence.
The empirical study has two main parts divided in four different moments. The first part of the study has three stages. The first is at the beginning of the process and offenders have to complete a self-administered pre-test questionnaire -at the end of the first individual mediation session- in order to know their expectations of the process. The second takes place immediately after the mediation, and offenders complete a self-administered pot-test questionnaire. During direct mediation -when victim and offender met together with a mediator- non-participant observation is carried out to observe the interaction between parties. In indirect mediation the last session with the mediator is observed. The second part of the study, which takes place 6 months later, consists of a final narrative interview with the offenders who had been observed during mediation in order to learn more about the offenders' life course, their experience in mediation and its possible impact on their lives in the future.